[IC] Amygdala Circuit

[Mcmolly]

There was a tense moment in the pavilion, a sharp sound as everyone watching collectively sucked in a gasp as Quinn launched herself into the air, then a wave of almost deafening hollers when she landed again in one piece. Beneath the surface of her mind, she might even have caught the ripple of panic from the depths.

Besca was not immune, having stood up so abruptly her chair toppled behind her. She was might have nearly broken her silent pact not to curse in front of her, had she not been paying close attention.

“Quinn!”

The word hardly reached Quinn faster than the axe did. A low, horizontal whirl came to an abrupt and violent stop in Ablaze’s thigh. Not deeply, and skewed sidelong from how far it had been thrown, but to someone new to flesh wounds, judging the severity would be difficult through the explosion of pain.

“You can’t run from me!” Roaki shouted. And just as Quinn had thought, Blotklau had indeed covered the space in no time.

The deflected axe lay discarded, yet unrecalled, perhaps momentarily forgotten. The one in Ablaze’s leg, however, was left there out of malice. For pain’s sake. Blotklau came at her unarmed, but it would have been a foolish and final mistake to assume her any less dangerous.

Something boiled within Quinn, louder than that shunned command to KILL. It wrapped her like a cloak, like a barrier between her and the Savior, and in the same way she’d shoved the voice under before, now it was wrestling to rein in her pain. A layer of numbness came to her, dull, but not ineffective. IGNORE IT it demanded, agonized. FIGHT.

Claws splayed, Blotklau came at her in a flurry of slashes and spearheaded strikes. Where they landed on flesh, even grazing, they carved and sprayed ichor, and in the bottom of her mind she could feel something pulse each time.

“Let me hear it!” Roaki’s voice was ravenous. “Scream! Beg! Come on!”

[Lemons]

Taunts were forgotten. Plans were cast aside. The instant the axe buried itself in her, she lost her hard-won composure. It hurt. It hurt it hurt it hurt. She staggered as Blotklau flew at her. She'd messed up. Went too far. Didn't go far enough. Wasn't careful. Was it over so fast? Was she—

IGNORE IT. FIGHT. She felt the pain dull. Just enough. An apology. Gratitude. Thank you.

Blotklau roared, and Quinn's mind snapped back into focus.

She abandoned her cannon, and it shattered into fading strands of white light. It would only slow her down now. Then she reached down, ducked a claw—almost, it raked across the back of her head and she bared her teeth—and ripped the axe from her leg, tossing it aside. Ichor drained in a thick stream. The pain was intense, even through Quinnlash's protection. But not quite enough.

The lessons with Dahlia came flooding back. Just like before, she backstepped, brought her hands up. The claws came faster than her sister's fists ever had. But at least now they weren't slicing her to ribbons so effortlessly. She grimaced. Dahlia. She loved her. She needed to get back to her. And she wouldn't let this cosmic joke stop her.

She ducked under a swiping claw, and found her opening. She still wasn't flexible. She still couldn't high kick without straining herself. But she knew the principle.

And she wasn't Ablaze.

As the hand soared past her, she popped back up. Backed slightly. Feinted a low kick.

Then she swept her leg up, up, over her head and certainly over Blotklau's. She roared right back, ichor flying from her mouth in viscous strands. And with all the weight of gravity, all the force of Blotklau's own breakneck advance, and the considerable strength of a Savior, she slammed it down, right on the point of her enemy's shoulder with a sickening, juddering crack.

Then she backed away. Fast. At least as fast as she could.

She'd gotten her space, at least just a little. But she'd hurt Roaki more than she wanted. And she'd been hurt so, so, so much more. Her breaths came in ragged gasps. She was lucky. Very, very lucky. If that hand hadn't gone just the slightest bit wide...

She jumped back further. Stumbled, but kept her footing. Quinnlash numbed her, just enough to keep her on her feet. She was close now. Two minutes. Less. But her whole body was ringing with pain. Those minutes felt like centuries.

She had just enough time to pull her cannon out again before Blotklau recovered. She didn't dare try to launch herself again, not in this state. But when Roaki came at her again, those shots—those little bursts of movement (not directed at Blotklau, of course)—might be just enough to keep in front.

The seconds ticked by.

The clock ticked down.

[Mcmolly]

Dahlia sat in the cockpit seat, hunched over the tablet, clutching it like a life raft in a storm. When the axe dug into Ablaze’s leg, she gasped loud enough to echo in the cramped, dark chamber. She had been ready to throw the screen aside and connect, wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but something stopped her. Not something she saw, not something she heard, but rather, something she didn’t hear.

She didn’t hear Quinn scream.

She heard her gasp, or grunt, maybe. She heard something but it wasn’t the cry of agony she’d expected. And when that absence gave her pause, she saw Ablaze right herself, almost immediately.

In a daze, Dahlia watched as Quinn dipped, ducked and deflected enough of Blotklau’s assault to keep herself alive. Then, in a sweeping arc, Ablaze’s leg came up, extended straight over her head like a clock struck noon. She might have been frozen there in that moment forever.

The leg came down. Hard. The toughened shin and modium scutes slammed down onto Blotklau’s shoulder with such speed and force it sent the Savior down to a knee, and the ground beneath her caved and the air cracked. Ichor sprayed the air, sprayed Ablaze, and Blotklau’s outstretched arm went limp.

Roaki screamed raggedly in the comms. There was unabashed pain in her voice, but it was quickly and violently overtaken by fury. As Ablaze backed away, Blotklau stumbled after her, tumbling down a hill and slamming into the next one as she dragged herself up it. Her left shoulder was crushed, caved in like the ground behind her. Bones black by nature or simply drenched in ichor splintered up through the flesh, and she could hardly so much as lift her forearm.

It didn’t stop her.

“Fuck you! Fuck you!” She clawed after her, hunched, her sprint fast and loping. “You think you can hurt me? No one hurts me! No one hurts me! I’ll show you—I’ll fucking show you! I’m gonna gut you like a fish! C'mere!”

Ferocious though her threats were, it took a long time for her to get her speed back, and by then Quinn had gained enough distance and momentum that, when she did catch up, did swipe at her, it was never quite close enough. Her claws skinned flesh, scraped modium, but couldn’t find purchase.

“Quinn,” Besca said, and while the worry wasn’t entirely gone, there was something equaling it now: confusion. “You have a shot. You have lots of shots, here. You gotta take one before she gets close again!”

A breath in Quinn’s chest, not from Quinn’s lungs. TAKE THE SHOT.

Roaki reached out her hand, and the axes tore into being. One she kept in her grip, the other she bit down on, held so firmly her jaw locked and her teeth cracked and shifted.

Besca’s warning was too late, she was already close again, and closer every second.

But the seconds were up.

A blackness crept in on Quinn’s vision, enshrouded her. The voice within her took a deep, bracing breath, and together they passed a dark threshold. On the tips of her ears, just soft enough to be ignored, but too loud to deny, came whispers from somewhere else. Somewhere that felt like home. Somewhere she wanted instantly and desperately, so desperately to return to, to be again, to be whole again and—

“No.”

“We are here.”

We. Are. Here.

She was here. Here, on Illun, in Casoban. Right here, in Ablaze. It was like something had anchored her by the soul, and refused to let her go, refused to let anything take her away.

Her eye burned, not with pain but with power. That red orb burst with white light, her cannon hummed and then roared with unbridled potential.

Quinnlash phased.

[Lemons]

Ablaze hummed, pins and needles racing up and down her not-body, and she felt a renewed pool of power rising in her. The report of her cannon stopped. It grew bright, then brighter, then held. It was roaring. Not in her ears, not in her hands, but in her. It was part and parcel of her, and in that moment, nothing in the world felt more natural than holding that flame back.

One last effort. Once last backstep. Just far enough away. Come on. Come on. Come on—

Screaming both in her ear and in her brain, Blotklau leapt. A low thing, almost a pounce. The axe in her arm, the axe in her teeth, glinted with their sharp and wild light.

They were on even ground. Her cannon was charged. And Roaki's feet had left the ground. Perfect. Exactly what she wanted.

Now or never.

She looked at Blotklau. Not at its axes, but at her, at the whole. She was moving low, but aiming long. She expected Ablaze to keep going. Keep moving back. Only one blow landed; why would she stop going now?

So, brimming with an ocean of new energy, Quinnlash lunged forwards.

The world seemed to pause. Time slowed to a crawl as she curled, tucking for a sideways roll upon hitting the ground. Blotklau's four red eyes slid back to her. Pain. Anger. Surprise. Confusion.

Upside-down now, midway through the roll, she brought the cannon to bear. It was like an extension of her body now, a part of her as much as her own gashed arms and legs. Blotklau was fast. Too fast for her to get a sure shot in. But now? No changing directions now. And she was point blank. She allowed herself a smile then. A grim, thin thing, a twisted rictus splitting across her mauled face.

Gotcha.

Click.

With a sound to eclipse thunder, a stream of blinding light blazed forth with enough power to tear through anything in its path. And it did. When she landed, tucked into that roll, her ear nearly popped with the sheer volume of Roaki's screaming, and she knew without even looking that she'd hit her mark. She hauled herself to her feet as fast as she could, even as pain ripped through her, and dashed back with earthshaking footsteps to Blotklau. Or what was left of it. Exactly where Quinn had hoped she'd be. Face down. Screaming. Axes forgotten. And with both legs rendered into smoke and ash from the knees down.

The grass all around them caught alight, and fires rose to meet her as she planted her foot in Blotklau's back. Not hard enough to hurt. But enough to send a message. And then finally, she brought down her cannon's business end on the elbow of the Savior's last intact limb.

A duel ended when the opponent could no longer continue, right?

"Disconnect!" She roared through the microphone, drowning out even Roaki's horrified, raging, spasming screams. She bore down with the cannon's barrel until she felt something pop, grinding into the dirt. "Disconnect! Or I take the arm too!"

[Mcmolly]

The pavilion erupted. In sixteen years—hell, in her whole life—Besca had never heard so much noise from so few people. They cheered louder than the Helburkans’ dirge, louder, it felt, than the roar of Ablaze’s cannon. It was hard to tell how much of it was her own, but Besca was absolutely certain her throat would be raw tomorrow. In her ear, she heard Dahlia squeal and burst into sobs of joy, and god if it wasn’t the second time in too-fucking-soon that she didn’t have to fight back her own tears.

It was over. It was over, Quinn had won. She’d beaten an animal like Roaki Tormont, and in stunning time.

She’d survived.

She’d—

“Disconnect! Disconnect! Or I take the arm too!”

She hadn’t—

“Quinn!” Besca shouted. She hadn’t noticed how the people around her had fallen almost instantly silent as they all saw what was happening. Saw that it wasn’t over. “Quinn you have to—that’s not how it works. You have to…”

“KILL.” This was not a word between breathes, a ripple at the bottom of her mind. This was a voice in Quinn’s ears, as real as the screams it overshadowed. “KILL HER. YOU WON. KILL HER.”

Beneath her, Blotklau thrashed and low, warbling groans dribbled from its mouth. Roaki’s screams wavered between pure, hellborne rage and broken, agonized sobbing. The hand of her ruined arm clutched impotently at the earth, unable to do anything more than drag ditches into dirt and stone. She arched against the foot on her back, trying to turn herself over, but Quinn had her pinned at the elbow by her cannon. White hot fire and burning exhaust seared the flesh where it touched, digging deep, closer and closer to bone each moment.

“I—I’ll…” neural static fuzzed Roaki’s words, but they were choked nearly beyond intelligibility anyway. “No! N-no! Wuh…ghah…won’t…not…”

The harder Quinn pushed, the harder Blotklau pushed back. The popping, the sizzling of ichor, hollow snapping of great bones and the tearing of colossal tendons. Roaki’s enraged pain took on a panicked edge as the inevitable grew closer, and faster than even Quinn could realize.

“I’ll…kill…you!”

A final shriek overtook the awful sound of Roaki’s arm ripping apart at the elbow, raw, furious, as Blotklau torqued around, propped up on the shattered bones of her other arm, and lunged at Ablaze’s face, razor maw gaping and ready to clamp shut on her neck. But even with the element of surprise it wasn’t enough. She barely made it as high as her chest, snapping uselessly at nothing.

The air in Roaki’s lungs wore out. Blotklau shuddered, her head twitched, and then she fell back limp on to the dirt. The red lights of her eyes dimmed. Over the comms there was a soft, pitiful wail, and the sound of someone tumbling out of their chair. Then quiet.

“FINISH. IT.”

A shiver passed through Quinn’s body. Not her Savior, but hers. For the briefest of moments she was two beings, and that shroud that had wrapped her, protected her from the pain, now constricted her. It was almost like she was back in those early dreams, a passenger in her own body, only the driver couldn’t quite move it. She could feel Ablaze twitching, see herself repositioning the cannon over Blotklau’s head. She could still do it. It wouldn’t be hard, we could do it together. We can. We can kill her Quinn, it’s what she deserves. We hate her, don’t we? Helburke dog. Monster. Taker. She deserves it.

PULL. THE. TRIGGER. NOW.

[Lemons]

Her hand trembled. Finger on the trigger. So close. So close. One shot. Clean. Pilot and Savior, both gone in the blink of an eye. It wouldn't even be painful. She would be doing her a favor. A favor.

Still she hesitated. The cacophony filled her head.

"You have to—"

KILL HER. END her. End this waste. End it. END IT—

"Quinn!"

Easy. Finish her. Just pull it, Quinnlash, and—

Her hand quivered—shook—tensed—so EASY—

KILL HER—

With a herculean effort, she smashed the cannon into the ground and let it dissipate. Took her foot off of the shattered wreck of Blotklau. And when she screamed this time, it wasn't the same roar she'd shown Roaki. It wasn't the shriek of panic, or the howl of pain. No. This was anger. Not Quinnlash's. Not whatever was on the other side of Ablaze. This was her anger alone, as she glared her one gleaming, cold white eye up at the swarm of carrion drones overhead.

"Shut up! All of you, just shut up!"

The numbness faded. The pain caught up, and she went down on one knee. Silence fell, both within her head and without. And still she carried on.

"Does she look like she can continue? Sound like it? This duel is over!" Her long, clawed fingers cut furrows in the earth as she dragged them into fists, and the burning grass around her raked pinprick burns along her leg. Her voice rippled, vibrated, like it couldn't even properly contain her anger. And she couldn't. She'd done what they asked. Fought their stupid battle. And she was done. "I am not killing her! I'm not pulling that trigger, and NONE OF YOU can make me! Do you hear me, you sick heartless bastards? She's not dying! Nobody dies today!"

She huffed. One breath. Two. Three. The anger flickered out just as quickly as it arrived, leaving her voice gray as ash; drained, hollow, and tired.

"Now get me out of this thing."

And Quinnlash Loughvein disconnected.

[Mcmolly]

Besca stared up at the screen, watching as Ablaze dropped to a knee and the light dimmed in its eye. Voices picked up around her again, but this time there was no cheering, just wild confusion. She…hadn’t done it. She hadn’t killed Roaki. But it was plain as day to anyone with eyes—and anyone watching through the hundreds of eyes in the sky—that Blotklau was down for the count.

Was this…allowed? It couldn’t be. Besca had never seen anything like this. Ever. There had been survivors before, but they’d lived through fluke, not mercy. You didn’t spare people in duels, it just wasn’t the way things were done.

And yet, it was done.

Her eye wandered to another screen, the news where a handful of unfortunate reporters who hadn’t gotten clearance to cover the duel were instead covering the minor twin singularities. Duds, apparently. They’d been open all morning and nothing had come through them. She’d never seen that before, either. What was that, then? Two miracles in a single day?

She smiled.

“Darroh!” Toussaint said, storming over to her. “Darroh what the hell is going on? What is she doing? It’s not over!”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is.”

“She’s not dead!”

Besca shrugged.

“So then get back on the line with her and tell her to finish the fucking job!”

“Nah,” she said, and walked past him, turning her attention to the crew. “Oi, go get my girl out of there. She won. We’re going home.”

---

---

The dark was cold and angry. It was thick, and tried to hold her down in the seat as if it had arms, as if the arms were hers. She could feel indignance from it, confusion, but mostly it was angry at her. How could she? How dare she? This was their purpose, this was what they had been born for.

LISTEN TO ME it raged, but beneath that it was pleading. DON’T GO

But Quinn went. She opened the cockpit’s door, and the daze from her phasing paired with how long she’d been in the pitch made the sun an angry glare for more than a few moments. Her thigh stung, but she could tell it and the little sore knicks across her body weren’t real, and with every moment the world grew clearer, the pain faded as well.

She walked out onto Ablaze’s shoulder, into a world of smoke and ash and dying ivory fires. And ichor. God, it was everywhere; splattered across her Savior’s body, pooling beneath Blotklau, and strewn all over the hills. A rank smell, metallic and…brine? Brine, and home. Paint—white paint on four walls no windows no doorknob no—

The shroud returned. It closed around her like a hug, grudging and unsatisfied, but present. It took hold of the burgeoning panic within her, as it had taken hold of her pain, and it sank. It sank deep into her mind, not to drown, but to tread water. With every moment, every breath she took, it grew more distant from her, and she more numb to it.

It would be back. We would face it together.

Staring off into the horizon, she could see little dots traversing the hills, drawing closer. They were coming to get her—to take her home.

She’d done it.

Quinnlash Loughvein had won her duel without taking a life. The drones swarmed above her, buzzing, excited. Something new had happened today, and it wasn’t clear yet, not to her, not to anyone, what that would mean.

But she’d done it.

It was actually over.

GET BACK INSIDE

So clear, it was almost like she was still connected. The words came to her with dreadfully familiar urgency, only last time, they’d said something else.

They’d told her to RUN

GET BACK INSIDE

QUINN GET BACK INSIDE. RECONNECT.

“—Quinn get back in! Get back in now!”

Besca’s voice was frightful, panicked. But what? What was it? Blotklau remained still behind her, and there was nothing else but the drones and the approaching convoy.

Except…except she couldn’t see the convoy anymore. She hadn’t lost it, she knew where it was coming from, but at the same time it was just…gone. No, not gone, hidden. There, some ways ahead of her, between her and them, the air was strange. Strange, and shimmering, almost mirrorlike. It flexed and undulated with liquid motions, but with every moment that passed she saw her own Savior’s reflection there, hovering in thin air as the edges around it grew more and more real.

THEY’RE COMING. GET. BACK. INSIDE.

Ablaze’s reflection changed. Its shape was different, its posture, and its eyes…red. Awake. The realization struck her then, on one side of the moment, that it wasn’t her reflection at all.

But it was familiar. So terribly familiar.

And on the other side of that moment, the air shattered, and a Modir came walking from the void of a singularity. It was tall, and donned from its shoulders was an iron cloak that ran down one side. In its uncovered hand it held a blade with a sharp cross guard and a fuller blazing with white light.

It was the swordsman.

[Lemons]

Quinn stared. Numb. Numb again. Numb with panic. Numb with fear.

But still again...Quinnlash urged her on.

She was so tired. So, so tired. And she didn't want to plug back in, didn't want to feel those fierce ripping pains again. But...she had to.

A beacon.

To light up the world around her.

And keep everyone there safe.

So, eye still on the sword-wielding Modir—god, she'd never fought a Modir before—she ran through the still-open skullport. Slammed the door. Flashes of white walls echoed around her. She gritted her teeth. Ignored them.

Keep everyone there safe.

"I'm plugging in." A moment. "Send Dahlia up, get her in Dragon. I don't know if I—" She cut herself off. The exhaustion was still there in her voice, and now a desperate fear came with it. But it had tightened, tensed. She had to do this. She was the only one who could. But no, she knew. She remembered Hovvi. She wouldn't—

And then as she clambered into the chair, suddenly—unexpectedly—her chest filled with joy. Unfiltered, unrefined, unwelcome. But there nonetheless. Because here, she didn't need to wait for the perfect shot. She didn't need to avoid shooting, taking care not to hit anything vital. She had no need to hold herself back, play on the defensive.

Roaki wasn't a monster.

This was.

Quinnlash Loughvein reconnected.

It hurt. A lot. The pain sliced back through her. But, tearing in sharp, ragged breaths, she fought through it and stood. Faced the Modir square on. Reached. Gripped. Pulled. The cannon dropped back into her hands. Everything was quiet, for just a moment. They looked at each other. Her heart quaked. No matter what she said...no matter what she'd told herself...she was so afraid. So horribly, horribly afraid.

Then the cannon in her hands roared, and the flame seared forth. She began to circle around, limping, trying to draw the creature away from the camp as best she could. A sudden feeling of tranquility took over her as she prepared for another fight. One from which she was...pretty sure she wasn't coming home.

"Deelie, are you there? Can you hear me?"

[Mcmolly]

The answer to both questions was yes.

“Quinn! Just hold on, I’m headed to the lift now, I’m—I’ll let it take me low enough for a good angle and then I’m dropping down! Just keep your distance!”

Strangely, that didn’t seem like it would be too difficult. The swordsman turned its body sideface as Quinn’s shot flew past it, exploding harmlessly on a distance hill. It matched her circling, and as the space grew between them it didn’t swerve to chase her. Instead, it reached down and plucked up one of the axes buried into the ground, not yet returned to the void. It stared at Quinn silently, and clutched the axe’s haft hard.

White flames burst to life on the head, as though activated. Only that couldn’t have been so—Modir never had two weapons. Did it mean to come at her with both? To make good on Roaki’s promise to gut her, to tear her limb from limb?

Evidently not. The flames on the axes grew brighter, spread from the blades down into the hilt, and burned deep. The swordsman’s grip closed harder, and there was a metallic keening sound, brief but sharp, before the blazing axe crumbled into embers. Far away, its twin collapsed into dust. It was nothing at all like how weapons were normally dismissed. What on Illun had it done?

She didn’t get much of a chance to wonder. Strange task done it kept walking, still staring straight at her but not a step towards her. Why? It had obviously come for a fight, and with the camp so far away, she was the only one—

It stopped over Blotklau, and before Quinn could even realize what it was doing, it lifted its sword high and plunged it down into the Savior’s chest. The fuller flared, the ichor that poured out from Blotklau’s heart burned and spewed silvery smoke. The swordsman tilted its head, pulled the blade free, and then repositioned it over the Savior’s face.

[Lemons]

No. It couldn't be. This couldn't be what was happening.

For the barest sliver of second, Quinn watched. The sword rose. Slowly. Slowly. No. The cameras above zipped around like flies.

What could she do?

It was her fault that Roaki was there. It was her fault that Blotklau was crippled. And it would be her fault if—

So what could she do?

A cannon shot wouldn't be enough. Even if it hit the Modir it might not even have the impact to stop the inevitable descent of the fell blade. Dahlia obviously wouldn't be down here in time. She had only seconds. The axes had been—

The axes.

A memory played back in her head then, right at the beginning of the duel: Roaki throwing an axe at her, then dashing after it. Then another: Roaki's savior, arm hanging limp, still screaming, struggling on. The threads snapped together. Only a few moments left. She and Roaki were similar, right? That's what she'd said just a little bit ago. Similar enough that Quinnlash was disturbed by the assertion.

Maybe it was time that instead of looking for the Quinn in Roaki, she needed to look for and channel the Roaki in Quinn.

So clenching her teeth and hissing out an anguished half-cry, she dashed forward.

Ichor still streamed from the wound in her leg. It still hurt like hell, but she ignored the pain, ignored it as best she could. The half-cry ballooned out in her chest into a full-throated scream, pain and anger—no, no you will NOT kill her I worked TOO HARD for this. And a second after she started running—no more, or there would be no time left, but no less, to build up that savage momentum—she twirled the cannon, holding it like a massive baseball bat, and hurled it forwards. It spun in a gleaming arc of silver metal and white light, cutting through the air with a sound like a helicopter towards the Modir as the blade reached its apex.

And she careened with it. If she hadn't been in a Modir's body, tears would be streaming out of her eye. Her Savior's scream was already starting to die to a croaking moan that presaged haunting wails. But she still pressed forward.

Nobody dies today.

[Mcmolly]

From a Modir, even anguish sounded like death. Ablaze took Quinn’s pain, took that pitiful shriek and morphed it into the low and rumbling beginnings of a battle cry, and when her breath finally caught up with her fury, the roar it released laid low the very wind. She loosed her cannon with enough force to shatter the air with a CRACK that matched her volume. Above and around her, scores of drones faltered, slamming into one another from the shockwave and falling to the earth in pieces.

The cannon flipped end ‘round end, and with Ablaze not far behind it, it seemed that no matter what the swordsman did, it wouldn’t be able to avoid both of them.

Perhaps it was the pain, or the panic—both still dragged beneath the surface of her mind, both kicking wildly to emerge—but by the time Quinn would have noticed the cannon hurtling towards, and then through, its own reflection in the air, it was too late.

The swordsman swiped its blade up, and cleaved clean through the cannon. Unlike the axes, it did not combust and dissolve, its halves merely vanished, and Quinn could still feel it in the ether beyond, tied to her, ready to be reclaimed.

She could also see, between the two of them, the mirrorlike sheen of a second singularity, and the red eyes behind it.

It shattered out, and two Modir came barreling through, slamming into her. Ablaze’s war cry was snuffed as the air was ripped from her lungs. One of the monsters had spear-tackled her at the gut, and the other ‘round her chest. They brought her crashing to the ground, rolling end over end until they came to a stop and both were atop her.

One had a vicious pair of gauntlets around its forearms, ending in claws sharped and more wicked than either Ablaze or Blotklau’s. It used them to clutch Quinn’s arm, to pin it to the ground and pierce her skin at the wrist and shoulder.

The other bore a mace, which it used to pin her other arm down by the haft. It snarled in Quinn’s face, leaking slaver and ichor onto her. Kick and struggle as she might, against the weight of both monsters she was utterly, helplessly locked.

The swordsman approached, and came to stand with a foot on either side of her chest. Behind him Blotklau still lay motionless, steaming from the wound in her chest but, it seemed, nowhere else. Raising the blade high, the Modir brought it down fast and fierce—

—Into the dirt beside Ablaze’s head.

It knelt down, low. One hand came and clutched her by the face, claws digging into her jaw. It pulled her up enough for their faces to be close, enough for her to see into its deep, crimson eyes. Many moments it held her there. A low, gruff sound pushed smoke through its jagged teeth.

“You.”

A voice. A man’s voice, rough and low and brimming with contempt. Not a whisper, not a feeling at the edge of her consciousness, or a sense bubbling up from within her. That was a voice, real and clear and—it wasn’t in her mind.

“Who is that?” Besca shouted—she could hear it too? But of course she could.

It was in the comms channel.

“Who is that?” Besca repeated. Demanded. “Identify yourself!”

There was no ID, nothing to show, nothing to trace. Just an empty profile hovering beneath her own. The swordsman rumbled again, and Besca was suddenly ejected from the channel. Only Quinn and the stranger remained.

“Do you believe yourself safe, cowering in there?” he asked, though it seemed more as though he were thinking out loud. “Did you think you could hide from me?”

Twisting his hand, he brought the blade’s edge up against Ablaze’s neck. Quinn could feel it digging in, shallow now but for how much longer?

“I found you in Runa. I found you here. Quinnlash. Loughvein. Yes, I know you well.”

The swordsman let go of her face, stood up tall and pulled his sword from the earth. He held it in both hands, blade poised down over her head.

“This time you will not escape death.”

Something thrashed within her, so strong and so desperate it was like she could feel her own, plugged-in body convulse. Ablaze arched, pulled against the other Modir without Quinn’s will, but it was useless. The burning fuller shined in her eyes. The swordsman’s gaze was red doom.

“Get the fuck away from her!”

Something crashed into the ground behind Quinn, so hard and sudden that it blasted the four of them with the earthen gore of the hill it had cratered. The swordsman stepped back, vanishing in the storm of dust as the two Modir lunged away.

Finally free, the unwilling thrashing turned Ablaze onto her stomach before dying away. The cloud of debris settled, and rising up from it was the shape over another Modir. Tall, so devastatingly thin that its flesh seemed painted over its bones. Ribs burst freely from its chest, curled up and in like a calcified cuirass. Its spine was a mountain range of sharp, bulging ridges that carried on long past its back, into a black, spinal tail that ran almost as long as it was tall. Twin horns curved backwards from just above its ruby eyes, over its head and back into tips that curled upwards. It was horrifying, and monstrous, and was in every way a nightmare to behold.

It looked like a Dragon.

Her hands splayed out into long, thin fingers with too many digits. They burned with black light. She brought them up to her face, into her mouth, one hand down and one hand up, and then she pulled. Hard. Hard like she meant to rend her jaw apart, to tear her head in two. Instead the black light flashed, and her fingers pulled through her skin as if phasing right through it. In their wake, she had ripped her weapon into being.

It was her mouth.

A hundred razor teeth gleamed with ivory fire, the inside of her maw was ringed with light and steel and it carried to the outside of her jaw, like armor.

Dragon took a long, deep breath., head tilted towards the sky, jaw clamped shut. The brilliant light gathered in her throat, pooled in her mouth. The armor about her cheeks bulged with barely-contained power. The clawed Modir and the one with the mace charged, screeching fury and lusting for blood.

She lurched forward, and from her mouth shot a beam of pure white light, as thin as her withered limbs. It carved the clawed Modir in half, and carried on past it, where it pierced the distant hills, and then further, slicing the center mountain of the dividing range clean apart.

The Modir and the swordsman paused, then split. Quinn heard Dahlia scream bloody, enraged murder over the comes, and Dragon projected it in a high-pitched and gut-curling roar. She charged for the swordsman, crushing the clawed Modir’s head underfoot.

The Modir with the mace turned like it meant to aid the swordsman, but as if by some unspoken command, redirected its attention to Ablaze. It readied its weapon, raised it high, and charged.

[Lemons]

There was silence in Quinn's head. Silence. Pure, dead, still, deafening silence.

Her body acted almost automatically, reforming her cannon from the beyond that it had been split into. All the roars, growls, grumbles, fell silent. The only thing that came from Ablaze was the low, ragged breathing of an injured animal.

Quinnlash. Loughvein.

It knew her name.

You.

It spoke to her. That wasn't supposed to happen.

She watched herself almost in third person as she skated backwards, ripping trees and stones out beneath her heels as she did. The cannon kicked in her grasp as one—two—three shots engulfed the air in front of her in a conflagration of white fire.

The silence ached in her ears.

I found you in Runa. I found you here.

It had come there looking—

It had come—

It—

The silence loomed.

The mace blew through the fire and the Modir came after it, voice shaking the air around it as it swung in a heavy downwards smash that, should it have connected, would have crushed Ablaze's head with no resistance, and even less mercy.

And then the silence broke. And the world came rushing back.

She dropped, whirled her leg out as she did so. The Modir, already scorched with glimmeering embers where it had run heedlessly through her salvo, leapt over it. Obviously it wouldn't be fooled by such a stupid trick, right? It brandished the mace again as it turned—

—And found itself facing a light like the sun.

Even as Ablaze lay against the ground, its eye had incandesced, lighting up with pale fire as she phased, blurring—for that one barest moment—between halves. Her jagged mouth split.

And then a horrible ragged thunder wrenched from her throat as the flame ignited again, a scouring, cleansing light that tore through the Modir like a knife parting paper. And when that light was just within the cavernous chest, as it began to shine through, there was an explosion that rocked the hills and sent whatever drones were left wheeling away out of sight and mind.

The Modir ruptured, splitting apart like a rotten fruit. Steaming, boiling ichor splattered hundreds of feet in every direction, and the thing's ghastly face plummeted through the sky, cratering itself into the dirt near the crown of the nearby hill. The ruined wreckage of the Modir scattered, ash falling to the ground like snow all around her.

Dahlia was still fighting. A half-turn over the shoulder confirmed that. She should help her—

I found you in Runa. I found you here.

—But the thought of talking to her, facing her, suddenly made Quinn—not Ablaze, Quinn—sick. Very, very sick.

She was so tired. Everything hurt so much. But the stream of frantic energy that ran through her now gave her enough strength to turn. To heft her cannon to her cheek.

Keep everyone there safe.

And to keep. Pushing. Forward.

To set the night ablaze.

[Mcmolly]

Dragon was wild, possessed of every bit of bestial fury Quinn had seen in Roaki. Her long fingers swiped at the swordsman, and when she dipped or ducked his swings, her jaw would unhinge like a snake devouring an egg, and a beam of light would blast forth. But he was nimble, fast, he seemed to know what she would do the same instant she did, and every shot sailed past him.

Dahlia could feel herself speeding towards the threshold. The Circuit always seemed so eager to meet her, to speak, to take. The two ends were hands on her head, pressing, squeezing to come together, pressure ready to crush her skull and finally make itself whole again.

But she never slowed down.

The Modir was good, incredibly so. But then, it had crossed swords with Ghaust and won, and when she had dropped down into Hovvi, it had fled before she ever laid eyes on it. Skilled, smart, fast. She couldn’t outpace him, and she certainly couldn’t take a hit from that blade.

Her mind raced, as if employing the dead pulses of her Savior’s brain to work in tandem with her own. She thought quickly, as was the way when you only had minutes in the cockpit.

Not minutes now. Not even moments.

She passed the threshold. The hands began to squeeze. Dahlia grit her teeth as the light burned in her core, radiated from her like sunlight through blinds. It poured from her eyes, from her chest, it made her horns glow molten. The swordsman must have known—of course he did. He whirled his blade and struck for her heart, perhaps expecting her to duck it and put herself out of position to unleash another attack.

Instead, she let it run through her shoulder. The pain was blinding, the pressure on her temples was so strong she thought her ears might be bleeding. But she grabbed the blade near the hilt, and on the guard, and she held. Her mouth opened, a bouquet of flaming teeth and a maw as bright as the sun.

The swordsman’s grip loosened, his sword vanished into the air. His hands took hold of Dragon by the throat and he wrenched her to the ground, face-down. It took every effort in the world not to let the blast go, to let it turn her and him and everything within a mile into ash and void.

Quinn.

I won’t lose Quinn.

Dahlia swallowed fire for her sister.

It was pain she’d only ever felt a few times, and as it traveled down her throat she knew it would push her out of consciousness. So with a final, furious scream, she pulled herself free of the chair, and Dragon went limp.

The swordsman saw it, must have known she’d disconnected. He yanked her up from the ground and then threw her down again on her back. Dahlia slammed against the cockpit walls, crying out, tumbling against the seat and then down onto the floor. He dug his fingers into her mouth and ripped the Savior’s lower jaw clean off. Then, reeling back his fist, he made to punch clean through the skull.

That was when Quinn’s blast hit him. It exploded against his cloak, sending modium and ichor flying. When the smoke cleared there was a crater in his shoulder, and his arm hung by black threads.

He turned to her, red eyes furious—and when she looked back she saw only her own reflection.

Before Quinn could fire again, the swordsman was gone. Vanished into the void. Escaped, again.

The battlefield fell silent, for the battle was over.

[Lemons]

All thoughts of guilt were gone. At least for the moment. Her heart pounded. Oh god. Oh god. Deelie. Deelie. "Deelie!"

Her ears were ringing. There was no time to wait for someone to extract her. No time for her to rappel out, even if the rope and harness had remained in the cockpit for the duel. So what else was she to do but throw Ablaze down, resting the side of its head against the ash-and-ichor grass as she finally, finally, disconnected. The heat of her phase slipped from her, to be replaced with the frigid air of the cockpit. Her whole body was soaked in sweat. Her leg hurt like fire. Her leg, and her—her everything. It was all sore.

She'd seen Dragon get tossed around like a ragdoll.

The pains faded. The terror remained.

Yanking herself out of the seat and falling to the wall of the cockpit, she bared her teeth, struggled up to the sideways skullport, and squeezed her way out.

Half climbing and half sliding her way down the ravaged head of her Savior, her feet—tiny human feet—nearly fell out from underneath her as they stepped on soil for the first time in what felt like eons. And she did go down, stumbling, falling, cracking her knee on a rock. But it didn't matter. She ran. Frantically. Across the cracked, baked earth, hot air still rising from it. Everything was forgotten as she scrambled, barely staying upright, barely staying comprehensible. She wasn't even sure she could hear through the ringing in her ears.

"Deelie, Deelie, Deelie!" As she passed the shattered fragments of Dragon's jaw, her voice escalated to a hyperventilating squeal, the voice of a desperate child who's lost something very important. "Oh god, Deelie!"

[Mcmolly]

It was so quiet. How could a place like this be so quiet? Even the crackling hills seemed muted in Quinn’s ears. The shroud tugged at her, worried—Not safe it muttered, but it wasn’t the same certainty as before. It wasn’t a warning, it was just…afraid. It was very, very afraid. And as Quinn continued to run, past the fires and rubble and the ichor, that voice sank down as well. The pain was fading, the panic, less so.

Dragon lay like a dead mountain. A waterfall of black blood poured from its half-gone face, spilling down its throat and pooling on the earth, staining it deeper than rain ever could.

As she drew closer, almost to the edge of that umbral lake, there was static in her ear.

“Quinn!”

Dahlia.

She was okay.

“Quinn! You’re—ohmygod—you’re alright! You—stop! Stay there, don’t come any closer to the ichor. I’m out, I’m on the—hold on!”

Moments later, Dahlia emerged into view, clambering over the Savior’s chest. She spotted Quinn, shrieked something unintelligible, and then hurried down. She was limping and as she drew closer there were clear bruises on her face, cuts from where the vents in her suit had snapped and broken. But she was alive, and so was Quinn.

Dahlia hit her like a missile, arms wrapping around her so tight and so fast it took them to their knees. She shrieked again, and this time it was clear that she was saying Quinn’s name, broken by thin air and heavy sobs.

[Lemons]

For just a minute—a half-moment of peace—Quinn lay there, squeezing Dahlia like she'd disappear if she let go. Her voice, her great desperate sobs, blotted out everything. It was fine. Dahlia was here. Dahlia was alive. Everything would be okay.

But that moment didn't last long. The world began to assert itself, creeping back into that void of sensation and thought. And the first thing that tore through as Dahlia embraced her was stunning, eviscerating guilt. What gives you the right to be close to her? The Modir came to Hovvi for you. FOR YOU. It's all your fault. You killed Daz. You killed Safie. You KILLED. EVERY. ONE. Those sobs didn't get any louder, but they grew heavier. They tears flowed more freely. She gripped tighter and buried herself deeper, like she was trying to hide herself in Dahlia's arms. And at some point, though she wasn't quite sure when, her keening wails were punctuated with anguished, crumbling words.

"...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...! I'M SORRY!"

The words were already hard to understand. Her voice was too tired, panicked, and tear-stained to be clear. But then her guilt caught at her throat again. Force her mouth open. Forced the words out as she gripped so tightly she could feel her whole body shaking from the strain. And then the guilt screamed with her voice.

"It's my fault, it's my fault, it's ALL my fault," she babbled, brain caught in a short-circuiting logic loop. "He was looking for me, he was looking for me, he found me, he found me before he was hunting me they came for me I led them there I let them in and without me Safie—" She went totally limp, barely holding on to her sister as she plunged further and further into self-loathing. Her voice broke and the sobs decayed, then collapsed into barely-breaths cut through with miserable, mewling apologies.

"_{I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please don't hate me...I'm sorry, I'm...}"

[Mcmolly]

Dahlia’s mind was a fog. She was nicked and scraped and bruised, and could feel that some things inside of her were either cracked or not quite where they were supposed to be. Her thoughts were a jumble, messy, like some had been left behind in Dragon and now the holes were slowly refilling. But one thing that was still crystal clear to her was that Quinn was alive. And upset.

She felt the shift from tears of joy to tears fraught with panic and fear. And…guilt? Yes, bizarrely, she did sound distinctly guilty. Dahlia winced as Quinn’s hold on her tightened to a death grip, listened as she babbled nonsensically about how this had all been her fault, how she’d been hunted—hunted?—and that she’d led them here—no, there. Where? She mentioned Safie, and something twisted in Dahlia’s heart, but she pushed it aside for now.

“Q-Quinn,” she said, sniffling, wrangling the steadiness back into her voice. Right, she was the big sister, it was her job to keep herself together. She held Quinn up when she went limp, holding her out enough to look straight at her. “Quinn, you didn’t—no, no don’t be sorry. Quinn you just saved my life. You did. You didn’t do anything wrong. You saved me, you’re my hero.”

She pulled her in again, hugged her tight and tried to get her back up onto her feet. “I’m so happy you’re alive. That’s all that matters, okay? You did it, I’m so proud of you.”

A crackling in their ears, the ping of someone joining the comms channel.

“Girls! Talk to me, hey—I’ve got vitals but no visual, someone get a bloody drone in the air now!—one of you say something!”

“Besca, it’s me, we’re okay. The Modir are gone.”

There was a shaking quiet on the other end before Besca mustered up a reply. “God—we saw Dragon go down, I…oh god. You’re okay, good. Good, just sit tight, convoy is headed back out your way. Ten minutes.”

“Sure thing.” Dahlia took Quinn by the shoulders, guided her away from the pooling ichor slowly spreading beneath Dragon. The smell made her dizzy, reminded her too much of real blood. They hadn’t touched it, thankfully, but when there was this much, they’d both need a battery of tests when they got back to the Aerie.

God, they were going back to the Aerie. She almost couldn’t believe it. They were going home, and they were both okay, and she hadn’t…done anything rash.

“Here, sit,” she said, finding a high, sloping rock to lean against. “You heard her, they’ll be here soon. Just sit here, hold my hand. We did it, Quinn. We really did it.”

[Lemons]

Quinn's head spun. Just too much. Too much was happening. She let Dahlia take her by her thin, shaking shoulders, walking her to a rock to sit on. God. They did it. She was right. They did it. The hills passed around her in a blur. The craters of combat, Ablaze lying down before her, the sun above her head, Blotklau—

She stared at the smoking, blackened wreckage of Roaki's Savior that lay smashed upon on the side of the hill. Even from here, she could tell that something was wrong with it. Something was wrong with the head. It was the wrong shape, all twisted and warped like a crushed soda can.

She gave a ragged shout, muted and garbled and barely louder than her normal speaking voice, but no less pained for it:

"Roaki! Please! Roaki!"

She pulled herself away from Dahlia's gentle hands and tried to run, to break into a sprint, to ignore it like she'd done while in Ablaze. She tried. She really, really did. But now, at last, her body had reached its limit, and told her: no more. The second she shook free, her legs gave up and turned to jelly underneath her. She pitched forward, hitting the furnace-hardened ground and crumpling in on herself.

Still she tried to get up, to drag herself forward. Guilt burned in her stomach, pulling her ownwards. But she'd run herself to the end of her rope, and she knew it. And what would she even do? There was a moat around it by this point. Blood that she had spilled. So all she could do was watch the silent, ichor-drenched hulk in terror.

"Besca!" The tears still on her cheek and spinning in her head conspired to make her sound desperate. Like someone was dying in front of her. Like she'd killed someone just in front of her. And maybe she had. "Blotklau is—it doesn't—Roaki is still in there!"

[Mcmolly]

Quinn wasn’t on the dirt for long. Dahlia had her up almost immediately, holding her steady and stifling every effort she made to push forward. Blotklau lay in a steadily growing puddle of ichor, with three of its limbs blown or torn free, and the third a shattered, awkwardly-bent wreck. It wasn’t stopping, either, it just kept bleeding, and bleeding. Soon enough it would fill the little basin around it to the brim, and spill out into the hills and valleys around it.

“Blotklau is—it doesn't—Roaki is still in there!”

Dahlia was silent, looking piteously out at the Savior, but her focus shifted more intently to Quinn. It took Besca a long time to respond.

“Quinn, I’m sorry I—I don’t know what to tell you. It’s Helburke’s Savior, she’ll have to wait for them to come extract her.”

“The skull’s been breached,” Dahlia said. Her voice was quiet, analytical. “I can see it from here. The body’s beginning to dissolve, the brain must have been damaged too badly. It’s mulched.”

There was another long silence.

“Besca?”

“They’re leaving.” Besca said, solemn but sturdy. “They said there’s nothing to recover.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means…god. It means it’s over. There’s nothing we can do. If it’s mulched, then the dissolution’s gonna make extraction too dangerous, and that’s if the cockpit isn’t already flooded with ichor.” She sighed, long, tired. “Quinn, you…you did good. You did everything you could have. I’m sorry.”

[Lemons]

Quinn hung her head. Besca was right. She did everything that she could. Everything.

"O...oka—"

She tried so hard. But sometimes things just didn't work out, right? Sometimes as hard as you tried, it didn't matter. She'd done her best. Wasn't that all that could be asked of her? It wasn't her fa—

Don't look, Quinnlash.

Alright! Wish me luck!

I found you in Runa. I found you here.

"NO!"

The word burst from her almost without warning and she thrashed, fighting against Dahlia's hold. Fighting weakly and getting nowhere, but fighting nonetheless, clawing uselessly at the air. Her breathing was loud and frenzied on the comm, and once again she started to scream. "No! God no god no no no!"

How many people?

Thousands, her cruel brain echoed back. Thousands, and now another one.

"Let me go! Let me go, please, no more, no more, please no more," her voiced lapsed back on itself, the frantic energy petering down as she tired herself out. Her struggles weakened quickly until before long Dahlia was holding a limp doll again. Still, she croaked feebly: "Please...no more, don't—don't let anyone else die—" Tears, momentarily arrested by her frantic outburst, poured out again, and she finally let herself close her eye, shutting Blotklau's dissolving carcass away.

"...Don't let anyone else die because of meee_eeeeee....."